Don't steal my YOP!

Exercise 2

This one was interesting, a composite character. I wrote a list of six people, either famous or known to me, and listed six things about each of them. I went for 

Job

Appearance

Sense of humour

Item of clothing

Place

Mannerism

Having listed these, I rolled a dice (in fact a random number generator using atmospheric noise to pick numbers) to choose which answer to use from each person. My selections left me with:

A footballer (From Jimmy Bullard).

Mediterranean looking (From Davide, my daughter’s swimming instructor).

Good but weird sense of humour (From my friend, Francois).

Wears lots of rings (From Debs, an actress we know).

Associates strongly with university (From David Mitchell).

Points a lot and is cocky (From Usain Bolt).

I am then to write a paragraph about them in a mundane situation, okay…

 I immediately think of a situation where all of these characteristics overtly combine in a single wild scene. 

Holly dribbles her football down the university hall. She’s trying to catch the lift. Another student gets in the way. She slams his face into the wall, scratching him with her many rings as she does so. She can see the doors starting to close and redoubles her effort, black hair flowing behind her. Ten meters to go, the doors are halfway shut but she has time. Flying past her tutor’s door, she cocks a finger and respectful nod at him. Her fingers jam into the closing door and it reopens. At the astonished group in the lift, who witnessed the whole thing, she offers a winning smile and says ‘Going down?’

On second thoughts, maybe I’m being asked to describe the scene and allow the character to respond naturally. After a bit of contemplation (and wondering if maybe I want a re-roll [or re-generate] on which of Usain Bolt’s characteristics I want included), here's what I've got.

Holly doesn’t lose her cool easily but this could be an exception. After the essentials there was rarely any money left for a luxury. Essentials included money for bus fare to Uni, books when she couldn’t borrow them, pens when she couldn’t steal them, drinking, smoking and taxi home on a Saturday night.

‘Where is it?’ she asked her housemates, the three of them looking at her with innocent bewilderment.

‘What?’ asked Kelly.

‘My drink…’ more blank looks ‘from the fridge’

‘That yoghurt?’ this was Macie.

‘Yoghurt drink, if it was a yogurt, it wouldn’t have come in a bottle.

‘A yogurt drink’s still a yogurt.’

‘No, it… okay, I’ve just realised that I don’t care what it’s called, its present location is of far more interest to me.’

Leshawn took her attention away from her phone for long enough to ask Holly why she played football when she was too clever for it. Holly ignored the question, assuming it to be rhetorical, Leshawn was already looking at her phone again anyway.

‘Right, I’m going out, any of you lot’ she roved a finger around the room ‘feel you need to replace it, now’s your chance.’ With that Holly went out.

It's an abrupt end I know but it was also only supposed to be a paragraph. Starting work on question 3 now.